June 25, 2013 -- daylily in ketchup bottle

This daylily blossom popped off a plant this morning when I struck it, accidentally, with the hose. I couldn't stand just throwing it away, so I brought it inside and jammed it into this little ketchp bottle, where it looks really pretty. I love the morning light in this photo, too. The green stem reaching over from the right is a garlic scape--part of a cluster of them in a nearby vase.

June 24, 2013 -- hollyhocks, lilies, snapdragons, ETC!

This was an attempt to capture the lushness of what's going on in the garden right now. This arrangement is bigger than any self-respecting windowsill arrangement should be, but...so were the flowers! It's hard to make a small arrangement with a hollyhock, although I should try. It was really this combination of colors that thrilled me: pale pink hollyhocks with magenta centers, dusky pink Asiatic lilies, bright pink catchfly (Silene armeria), yellow and peach snapdragons, and interesting wild grasses. And, unbelievable as it may seem, most of these stems are garden discards! The snaps needed to be cut because they were on the ground or on the way to seed, the hollyhocks were suffering from a bad case of rust on their lower leaves, the catchfly I pulled by accident. The lilies.. well, yes, I cut those and the grasses for their beauty.

Up close view of these wonderful colors below. 

  

June 23, 2013 -- chard leaves

This isn't from today--I actually dropped these Swiss chard leaves into bottles day before yesterday--but here they are in a photograph. Two interesting things here: these were the "bad" leaves--the ones that didn't make it into a stir fry, but look how pretty they are! And I didn't notice until I saw the photo that the two bottles on the right still had some fat, green yucca stems in them (stems I'd cut off then just sort of warehoused in these bottles). For this photo, I should have added a yucca stem to the bottle on the left, too, but who knew, it would matter?! Goes to show you that what's under the water matters as much as what's above it in an arrangement like this.

June 21, 2013 -- black-eyed Susan, etc.

This arrangement (sitting on a Flower Camp windowsill) is in a little pitcher a friend made. The leaves are from river oats and sedum; the flowers are a black-eyed Susan and butterfly weed.

June 20, 2013 -- green & white/yucca & bssil

This basil had been sitting in a juice glass on the windowsill for a long time. In fact, if you look closely, you can see it has rooted! But this morning it got a special addition--yucca flowers. The big stalk I displayed on the windowsill yesterday morning was falling apart, and dropping florets all over the place, by this morning, so I picked some of the intact flowers (those on short side stems) off and added them to the basil. The greens and whites are so pretty together. And I've loved having a chance to get to know yucca flowers better. They're almost like orchids in color and texture.

June 18, 2013 -- listing yucca

I love this, because it represents what's going on outside. We've had so many storms and so much rain that yucca all over the state is listing or has fallen totally over and is lying on the ground. This is the only one I had that was blooming, and it was lying on the ground.

I enjoyed so much about doing this. Enjoyed handling the heavy, heavy flower stem, enjoyed looking for a vase heavy enough to support it horizontally, and enjoyed the result, because this flower scape looks absolutely luminous lit from behind.

June 17, 2013 -- larkspur, snaps, hydrangea

These colors are so pretty together: blue larkspur, pale yellow snapdragons, bluish and greenish hydrangeas. The arrangement is actually too big to qualify as a windowsill arrangement, but I pulled it together to take to a friend in the hospital and figured it could to double-duty on the windowsill.

This photo would be so much prettier if my ancient storm window frames were't so dark. But I like seeing my yellow pot out the window. It's filled with Sum & Substance hostas.